Oral History Centre
About
The Oral History Centre is an initiative of the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, which aims to develop the collection and study of oral history in Ireland and become a valuable centre for historical studies.
Founded by Dr Maura Cronin (now retired from the MIC Department of History), the centre holds a unique collection of more than 3,000 interviews on 20th century Irish social and cultural history. A number of interviews are available on the Mary Immaculate Research Repository (MIRR) here.
The centre recently collaborated with Limerick City and County Council and the Limerick Archives to make nearly 50 interviews available online including Fisherman’s Tales - 30 in-depth interviews with local fishermen who fished along the Shannon River and also with reed cutters and boat builders. The Creative Ireland funded short film, The Estuary, was based on the groundwork laid by these interviews.
The collection also includes interviews recorded as part of the Pigtown Project (interviews about Limerick’s bacon factories); the Ranks Project (interviews about the local flour mills) and St Joseph’s Hospital Archive Project. The Oral History Archive interviews are available here.
These interviews were conducted as part of a number of projects run by Limerick Archives in partnership with MIC’s Department of History and Geography with Dr Cronin and Dr Helene Bradley-Davies directing preliminary research and overseeing the interview process.
A new project on memories of shops and shopping in Limerick City started in May 2018 -coordinated by Dr Bradley-Davies and Dr Cronin and supported by Limerick City and County Council.
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